Five More Weeks

Dammit, I need a vacation and I still have five more weeks to go before we leave for Florida. I believe I just might disintegrate into ashes before then. It's been a grueling month so far. My dear friend is in the hospital after having major surgery. I'm trying to finish up the cookbook of my late mother-in-law's recipes. Our taxes still aren't done. And I have a pile of crap laying all over and spilling off of my sewing table that needs to be cut into pieces for quilts. Nothing is getting done.

It was sort of a working weekend. We spent Saturday in the back yard cleaning up the remnants of winter. We pulled the tropical plants out from under the grow lights in the garage to the natural sunlight of the patio. They received a good soaking yesterday from the all day rain storm.

My yard is showing signs of spring even though it's only March. But the weather has been encouragingly warm for this time of year by Arkansas standards.

The fish that hugged the bottom of the pond all winter to stay warm are swimming toward the surface to resume the daily feeding ritual.

Daffodils were the first plants to emerge at the end of February...



Followed by the weeds, which were thankfully unable to keep the hyacinth from peaking up through the leaf debris...



The climbing roses are sprouting new leaves and it won't be long before we have beautiful yellow, salmon and red roses...



Tom's Arapaho blackberries are starting to sprout leaves as well. If we can keep the birds and squirrels away from them this year, we might get enough to bake a couple of blackberry galettes...



The clematis are not only leafing out, but setting buds for those beautiful lavender flowers...



And my Meyer lemon tree that sat protected under the grow lights in the garage all winter is flowering profusely...



Last season I got seventeen lemons. If the flowers are any indication, we may have to prop up the branches later in the summer to keep the heavy fruit from breaking the branches. I should be so lucky. No, actually I would be luckier if we moved to Florida where I could plant that tree in the ground outside where it could stay all year round. But that's another blog post.

I knew Tom would want to kick back Saturday evening and watch a movie, so while he was cleaning out the back yard from limbs and leftover fence repair lumber (because, of course, the fence Kroger contracted to have erected is probably one of the worst fence jobs I've ever seen and had to be modified on our side to close huge gaps that a German shepherd could squeeze through), I decided to make a snack mix for Tom for movie time...



The stuff is too good and by that I mean, after two evenings, there's not a whole lot leftover. I will post the recipe on my food blog, Terri's Table, later today.

Sunday I worked on the cookbook all day long. I've had the box of recipes since the weekend of my nephew's wedding in May last year and so far the cookbook is 67 pages but there's still a lot to do. I'd wager it will be well over 100 pages when it's finished. And I've only tested a few of the recipes. If I tested each recipe, I'm sure it would take two years or more of intense cooking and writing to complete it. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

So, yeah, five more weeks until vacation. A lazy week drifting about on a floaty in a swimming pool; boating leisurely through canals and the intracoastal waterway hoping to catch a close-up glimpse of a few manatees and dolphins; drinking wine and watching sunsets on the beach; dinners at harbor and beach-front restaurants or poolside; all in the company of Chris and Kelly and the grandkids and my cousin and her husband.

Then hopefully during the summer we can go back out to Reno to visit Mike and Kathy and the grandkids again. Tom is trying to get the travel trailer ready for that trip.

And all of it in shorts, t-shirt (and of course bathing suit) and flip-flops! Yay summer!